I've been thinking about classic computer games recently, and eventually I found myself making a list. As I did, I wondered: how many of these legendary games have folks here played? So I thought I'd make a poll about it.

Which then had to turn into two polls, since only 20 choices are currently permitted here.

How many of these have you played?

(There are plenty of these I haven't played myself. And I will understand if there are some favorites that aren't on this list -- there wasn't room for some of my personal favorites, either. I tried to select games that, whether I played them or not, are generally held to be important in one way or another. If anyone feels I left out too many, please feel free to create an additional poll!)

I just saw a fascinating bit of news: with the approval of the original developer, Eric S. Raymond will make the 1995 C source code for the Crowther & Woods Colossal Cave Adventure available via GitHub.

So all you who never played this seminal game will, once ESR cleans up the code and adds it, have no excuse not to try it out.

Expect some frustration, if you play it like one of today's games. This was one of the earliest text parsers for a game (yes, simpler even than Zork's), so you have to figure out what it understands. (That used to be considered part of the fun.)

But the reward will be to really get the in-jokes that have persisted for four decades now: XYZZY, plugh, and getting lost in a maze of twisty passages, all alike....